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By Root 1044 0

spirituality of artistic masterpieces, their other worldly quality, is in contrast authentic, and involves a feeling—experienced atheist and believer alike—that standing before a masterpiece you are presence of a power that exceeds anything you can imagine for yourself, something greater than you ever can or will be. The rapture masterpieces offer is literally ecstatic—taking you out of yourself. Theists may to attribute all this to the power of God, Darwinian humanists near miraculous power of human genius. Both will approach such works as suppliants: we yield to them, allowing them to take us where will.

The artistic masterpieces of our age may seem a long way from first daubs of red ocher on a human face or the first musical notes that echoed through ancient caves. Yet what our ancestors began spread across globe, in art high and low. We remain like our ancestors in admiring high skill and virtuosity. We find stylish personal expression arresting, well as the sheer wonder of seeing the creation of something new. Art’s imaginary worlds are still vivid in the theater of the mind, saturated with most affecting emotions, the focus of rapt attention, offering intellectual challenges that give plea sure in being mastered. And over all this, share with our ancestors a feeling of recognition and communion with other human beings through the medium of art.

Preoccupied as we are with the flashy media and buzzing gizmos daily experience, we forget how close we remain to the prehistoric women and men who first found beauty in the world. Their blood runs in our veins. Our art instinct is theirs.

Acknowledgments

I owe much to the many people whose advice and inspiration have helped me bring this project together. Alexander Sesonske, Noel Fleming, and Herbert Fingarette incited interests in aesthetic theory. Sidney Hook was a fine teacher and a brilliant example of in de pendent thinking. Ellen Dissanayake, a scholar far ahead of her time, showed way to a Darwinian aesthetics, inspiring my early forays into this territory. In terms of outlook and temperament, Steve Pinker is some respects a polar opposite of Ellen, but his lucid analysis and insistent interrogations have left marks all over this book, including title. I owe much to both these thinkers, as well as to two other scholars, Joseph Carroll and Brian Boyd, for invaluable knowledge and insight. Thanks also to Noël Carroll, Doug Dutton, Julius Moravcsik, Stephen Davies, Alex Neill, Brett Cooke, Thierry Lenain, Ray Sawhill, Richard A. Posner, Ihab Hassan, David Gallop, Elric Hooper, Geoffrey Miller, Joseph Palencik, Wayne Lorimer, Francis Sparshott, Wilfried van Damme, Chris Boylan, Bruce Ellis, Satoshi Kanazawa, Garth Fletcher, Graham Macdonald, Simon Kemp, Ian Steward, Ray Prebble, Jonathan Haidt, Geoff Carey, Ben Dutton, Sonia Dutton, Susan Vogel, and the late Leo Fleischmann. Katie Hender-son helped sharpen the argument. Peter Ginna is a gifted editor who from acquisition to the final proofs has applied his extraordinary talent care to this book. Like my friend and agent, John Brockman, Peter an early believer in my approach to aesthetic questions. I am indebtedto both of these men.

Above all, the support and collaboration of my wife, Margit Dutton, her over the years about art, music, literature, and life. This book dedicated to her, and to our children, with love.

Christchurch, New Zealand

Notes

These notes include references to material available on the Internet. Long Website addresses are tricky to transcribe, and specific sites often go dead. Web citations are therefore given here in brackets: “w/s,” means “Web search,” and is followed by a series of words that can be typed into any standard search engine. The desired Web site, and other relevant sites, should appear in the top two or three entries in your search results. Thus [w/s sailer golf courses] is an instruction to type “sailer golf courses” into a search engine in order to locate Steve Sailer’s article relating golf-course design to prehistoric landscape tastes. An updated site for source material